Left Alive Review - No Will To Survive
Left Alive: the undercover game to avoid at all costsUnveiled at the Tokyo Game Show 2017, Left Alive had all the ingredients necessary to make mech game lovers drool. With names like Toshifumi Nabeshima (Armored Core), Takayuki Yanase (Gundam 00, Xenoblade Chronicles X) and especially Yoji Shinkawa (Metal Gear Solid) in the credits, the universe of Front Mission had everything to be sublime with this game of action infiltrated. Anyway, on paper. Because in reality, Left Alive looks more like a terrible accident.
If like us, you had preferred to wait wisely for the release of Left Alive while avoiding any form of spoil, you have probably discovered very recently that the game of Square Enix is not a game of mechas strictly speaking, like the first strip - announcement let him guess. No, Left Alive is evolving into a more subtle genre, that of infiltration, of survival itself. The title invites you to live the destinies of three different characters, taken aback by the declaration of war and the sudden invasion of their country by a neighboring state. Here there are no big muscular counterattacks or vengeful missions, but rather the desperate attempts of a few human beings, who seek to survive a dirty war, where civilians are liquidated as easily as soldiers who prefer to surrender. A Japanese drama, the tone and themes of which will bring back memories to fans of real robot anime. This could have been quite attractive if Left Alive had refined its gameplay. Because it only took us a few hours to measure the extent of the disaster that was unfolding before us: Left Alive was plagued by a multitude of faults and game-design errors, which very quickly made the experience difficult to bear.
EXTREMELY RIGID CONTROLS
Left Alive: the undercover game to avoid at all costsTravel is extremely heavy.
First interface with the game, the control that the player has on his virtual avatar must meet a certain amount of qualities. Flexibility, speed of reaction, well thought-out commands, arrangement of these commands on the joystick… It is nothing short of an ordeal in itself and if most of our modern games are doing very well, Left Alive slips from the first moment . It is enough to maneuver Mikhail, the Ruthenian soldier for a few minutes to see a plethora of worries: the character is heavy, moves slowly even in sprint, and his animations lack fluidity, lightness. The cover system, inspired by Gears of War, is extremely rigid, since it is for example impossible to throw yourself far behind a barrier: unlike the title of Epic Games, you have to be stuck to a barrier to perform this often saving action. The simple fact of aiming is a gamble and the melee attacks too often lack precision, a drama in a game as demanding as Left Alive where the slightest error can cost your life. It was hoped that this feeling of heaviness would disappear by taking control of Olga, by betting that Mikhail is a soldier and that he is stuck in his thick Wanzer pilot suit. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
It should also be noted that the layout of the controls on the Dualshock 4 goes against all the conventions that have imposed themselves in recent years, for example by assigning the sprint key to the R1 button, while clicking on L3 to squat. It is therefore a safe bet that you will crouch down every time you are going to want to flee. We find this kind of oddity even in the game menus, where everything seems to work backwards. Usually, the large triggers (L2 and R2 here) are used to navigate between the main menus, while the small triggers (L1 and R1) allow you to move through the submenus displayed on the same screen. Here it’s the opposite. It may sound anecdotal, but when you have years of experience behind you, and you have to quickly navigate through these menus to craft an object (we'll come back to this), it quickly becomes a problem. After almost 15 hours of play, we still hadn't managed to move through these menus without stumbling or doing something stupid.
A STACK OF GAMEPLAY ERRORS
However, if this list of faults already seems substantial enough, it is nothing compared to all the game-design problems that Left Alive collects. Presenting itself in the form of a rather arduous undercover game, in which a few action scenes are supposed to bring variations in rhythm, the title fails in all sectors: it is a very bad undercover game and a poor action game.This is due to many reasons which we will detail in great detail. By trying to shape a demanding stealth game, Square Enix has in fact given birth to a game that is too often difficult for the wrong reasons. There are too many enemies, too many obstacles, and rarely the means to overcome them. For example, it is impossible to eliminate or knock out an enemy when arriving behind his back: there is no command of this type in Left Alive, yet a basic of the undercover game. There is indeed an electric pistol but it only paralyzes a target for one or two seconds, and is therefore completely useless. It is therefore necessary to go on the attack, which generally generates a state of alert which will later attract other soldiers. The problem is that the game ultimately offers you quite a few weapons, let alone ammunition; these quickly run out because not only are the enemies very resistant, but in addition to the headshots have no more effect than the shots in the belly. If you were thinking of saving ammunition by perfecting your headshots, quickly forget this idea. There remains the iron bar, which can be used to eliminate isolated enemies; only then again, you have to work hard to knock out an enemy and the bar in question ends up spoiling, until it becomes completely ineffective. We counted: an iron bar eliminates two enemies before breaking up, and replacing them is downright difficult. The most annoying thing is undoubtedly the very handling of this weapon: the strike animation does not involve any form of step forward, the character therefore remains on the spot when he strikes. Which means you have to be almost stuck to your target to reach it. Only, the enemy in question is rather mobile, and tends to walk backwards at the same time as he shoots you. We would then be tempted to move towards the guy to settle his account, but his speed of movement, in reverse, is equal to ours, in forward. Unable to catch him and therefore hit him, a problem he does not have with his submachine gun. We can then try to run over him, but generally the sprint impulse is too strong and we land either next to him or behind him. With the flexibility of the character, there is often time to take a few bursts in the legs before you can be aligned again with the enemy. In short, hell.
We then opt for an even more discreet approach, seeking to avoid any form of confrontation. Except that the different levels are full of enemies which it will be very difficult to get rid of, even by multiplying treasures of ingenuity to get through the cracks. There is a good reason for this: the tools supposed to allow your infiltration too often have no effect. Take the case of smoke bombs, for example: their area of effect is too small and generally they have no interest. Molotov cocktails are useless since an enemy caught in its flames suffers only too little damage, and prefers to trample on the spot by shouting "Ouch" every two seconds, rather than fleeing. And so on. How, in such conditions, create a diversion? It’s too often tedious, and you’re wasting time dealing with the stupidity of AI and the irregularity of its reactions.
The bottom line is that most of the time, we face a test that we cannot overcome, unless there is a miracle. The objects that are cracked are used at high speed, often without any noticeable effect, and the muscular approach never really succeeds. You end up getting annoyed, dying again and again, until you try more risky things. We try to go fast and we come up against the inflexibility of the character, and the heaviness of the interface, in which to quickly craft an object or use a life-saving care kit in time is a feat. To give you an idea, in level 2, after having miraculously succeeded in reaching the final objective, we discovered that we had to get out of a building suddenly attacked by enemy troops. The player is then in possession of a submachine gun but too few bullets to eliminate the first four soldiers who present themselves to him. Molotov cocktails and homemade bombs parade, we improvise as best we can until miraculously succeed, and after several attempts, to sneak out of the building. Under enemy fire, there’s no time to figure out what to stabilize your bad health for, since the interface and controls are too heavy for that anyway. However, when we think we have done the hardest, we discover that there are still a dozen soldiers waiting for us outside. Game over.
That Left Alive is demanding, it is not a bad thing, good infiltration games gain flavor when they manage to cleverly spice up their challenge. But this title is not hard because it has been assembled with care, it is hard because too many elements of gameplay do not stand up. Triumphing over a level is never satisfactory for the simple reason that it is too often a combination of circumstances, a series of strokes. There’s nothing fun about it. Especially when you feel like the game is playing on us. As such, the level-design reveals many surprises, with level pieces that are absolutely useless, if not unnecessarily enlarge the space to be exploited. We often lose a lot of ammo, time and carefully crafted items to reach an area that opens onto nothing, and worse, is surrounded by invisible barriers that are not on the map. What complete any desire to dig deeper a title eliminated by too many faults.
A NICE WASTE
And you can't help but feel deep disappointment. Since beyond its XXL cast, Left Alive could have arguments to develop, like its universe, its characters, its scenario, or even its artistic direction, rather successful. But even there, the problems are counted in spades, between the dated graphics, the script choices without great consequence, and the missed English dubbing. Difficult to feel the slightest empathy for its characters who on the screen come to life and express themselves like robots. Finally, we may have found the mechas of Left Alive. They just weren't there.The notes
+ Positive points
The artistic direction, which gives a certain personality to the game
The scenario, both tragic and well conducted
The Front Mission universe
-Negative points
A mind-blowing amount of game-design errors
Overwhelmingly stiff controls
Almost non-existent AI
A badly calibrated difficulty
Dated graphics
“Caution, the enemy is approaching” in a loop
Suffering from a dated achievement, and a large number of game-design errors, Left Alive is a game that disappoints as much as it annoys. The project was interesting, the bias also, but the finished product is too imperfect, with gameplay loops that simply do not work. To forget.
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